Currently, a patient at a hospital or medical clinic is moved from location to location numerous times in order for a procedure to be completed. Also, typically, OR and intervention rooms and equipment used therein are underutilized in most hospitals and medical facilities, thereby increasing the cost of procedures. In addition, OR/intervention rooms are typically so crowded with equipment, lighting fixtures, booms, monitors, utility columns or booms, hoses, tubes and lines, that it is difficult for OR/intervention room personnel to actually move about efficiently. Also, such equipment can impair the vision of OR/intervention room personnel and impede laminar air flow from an overhead source, over the patient, and then out of the OR/intervention room. Such lighting fixture booms, equipment booms, etc., often set up air eddies or dead spaces. Also, fixtures, equipment, etc., can collect dust particles that can then be blown into the surgical field within the laminar air flow column at the surgical/intervention site thus compromised the laminar air flow system's purpose of reducing surgical/intervention wound infections.
In addition, an extensive period of time is required to clean and prepare an OR/intervention room after a procedure has been completed. The room is manually cleaned, and the soiled equipment, diagnostics, linen, etc., must be removed manually from the room and new supplies, equipment, etc., delivered to the room and set up. This takes time, which reduces throughput and the number of cases per day. The cost of the personnel for carrying out these tasks is not insignificant.
The present invention seeks to address the foregoing drawbacks of existing OR/intervention room structures and procedures. The present invention strives to reduce the number of patient moves, enhance patient safety and provide flexibility and adaptability of the OR/intervention room for future advances in patient care.